Dr. Thomas C. Butler, the distinguished physician and specialist in
infectious disease who was sentenced to prison last year for
improperly transporting medical samples, is the subject of an
extraordinary profile in the latest issue of the medical journal
Clinical Infectious Disease.

"Thomas Campbell Butler, at 63 years of age, is completing the first
year of a 2-year sentence in federal prison, following an
investigation and trial that was initiated after he voluntarily
reported that he believed vials containing Yersinia pestis were
missing from his laboratory at Texas Tech University," the article
begins.

"We take this opportunity to remind the infectious diseases
community of the plight of our esteemed colleague, whose career and
family have, as a result of his efforts to protect us from
infection by this organism, paid a price from which they will never
recover."

Dr. Butler is credited with having saved literally millions of lives
in developing countries through his pioneering work on oral
hydration as a treatment for diarrheal diseases.

See "Destroying the Life and Career of a Valued Physician-Scientist
Who Tried to Protect Us from Plague: Was It Really Necessary?" by
Barbara E. Murray and 13 colleagues, Clinical Infectious Disease,
vol. 40, no. 11, 1 June 2005:

The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals yesterday affirmed that the Vice
President's Energy Task Force was within its rights to meet behind
closed doors with industry participation since the industry
participants were not, strictly speaking, members of the Task
Force.

The ruling is a victory for the Bush White House and a new
constraint on open government.

See "D.C. Circuit Narrows Advisory Committee Openness," an analysis
from the National Security Archive here:

Many FOIA requesters are likely to have unrealistic expectations
about how the Freedom of Information Act process should work, and
may be disappointed when voluminous responsive records do not
appear on their doorstep free of charge within a few days.

But increasingly, even experienced requesters with modest hopes and
low expectations are frustrated with the performance of government
agencies.

In a statement prepared for a House hearing on FOIA today, a
requester named Charlotte Dennett recounted her efforts to obtain
60 year old records from the Central Intelligence Agency concerning
her late father, Daniel C. Dennett, a counterintelligence officer
with the OSS and the Central Intelligence Group (CIG).

Although the Agency did release hundreds of routine personnel
records to her, "the CIA did not provide me with anything remotely
connected with my father's last months or with his death (along
with six other Americans) in a March, 1947 plane crash. The CIA
justified its actions by citing FOIA exemptions based on protection
of Agency sources and methods and reasons of national security."

For reasons explained in her statement, Ms. Dennett did not find
this claim persuasive. Her appeal of the matter extended
inconclusively for several years, and it is now in litigation.
See:

In the United States, where intelligence budget secrecy is a deeply
rooted dogma that defies rational criticism, it takes a court order
to compel the disclosure even of a forty-two year old budget figure
(Secrecy News, 05/09/05).

But in other mature democracies such as the United Kingdom, Canada
and elsewhere, annual publication of intelligence spending figures
has now become the norm.

In the Netherlands, the General Intelligence and Security Service
(AIVD) included budget data in its latest annual report as a matter
of course.

Thus, in 2004, the AIVD spent 52.2 million Euros on personnel, 32.2
million on material costs, and 3.1 million on secret expenditures.

A recent AIVD report analyses the threat posed by radical Islam.
See "From dawa to jihad - the various threats from radical Islam
to the democratic legal order," English translation dated March
2005, here:

Current and proposed funding for the Department of Homeland Security
is described in a recent Congressional Research Service report with
somewhat greater clarity than in DHS budget documents themselves.